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Review : Sony CDX-MP40 MP3-CD Car Stereo
Last Friday I had a new car CD player stereo installed in my 1997 Neon. I have been very pleased with my little sporty gas miser of a car since I purchased it last November after my old Ford Taurus died a horrible death on me. But that is not the whole truth. I grew to despise the piece of shit Koss CD player the former owner of my Neon installed. It would skip and it would only accept a CD about one out of twenty times. I would keep getting "Load error -2" and it would take about twenty tries to get it to play a simple CD. It could not read CD-Rs or CD-RWs and was a truly worthless piece of crap. So rather than buying an Apple iPod or a Dell MP3 player I opted to install a MP3 capable CD-player in my car. I have an Best Buy had a sale on the Sony CDX-MP40 MP3-CD Car Stereo since they had newer models coming in. I was able to get it for a clean $120 and since it was over a hundred bucks they installed and tested it for free.
This is a simple joy to use. The display is bright back lit blue and red. The CD eject button is on the drive itself and you can get a CD out of it with out having to have the face plate on. The design is streamlined and ergonomically. I can switch tracks and albums with out having to really look at it while driving. It can control a XM satellite radio system should I ever want to install one. I can program it with some radio stations that I like. Strangely it came with a mini remote control. This is a bit odd since both myself and my girlfriend are going to be in the front seat at all times and honestly I do not care if the people sitting in my back seat can change the volume or not.
But I have not gotten to the best part of it. This sucker is designed from the ground up to be a kick ass MP3 player. I can set up a play list of around 160 songs in iTunes and then burn a MP3 CD full of over then hours worth of crystal clear digital music on it Then I can pop out the CD and stick it in my computer at work or a MP3 enabled DVD player and keep the music flowing. You can fit around ten to thirteen CDs worth of MP3s on a disk and they cost pennies to burn. The CD player understands albums and track information and displays it on the screen. I freaking love the skip Album button where it can skip ahead to the first song of another album. It has never skipped and can handle all sorts of MP3 files. However it can not handle Apple ACC or Microsoft WMA files but that is OK in my book because I am building my music library in pure DRM-free multi-platform MP3 files. I decided that one my great CD to MP3 migration is done that I will have one big bitchin MP3 music library that I will be able to enjoy at home, at work, at my lovely girl friends place and now in my car. I can have the entire works of Led Zeppelin on one CD and have over a thousand songs stored in the CD-Rs on my CD visor. Sony did not include any software to rip MP3s and burn them to CD but since it uses standards it can work with any OS. I recommend Apple iTunes because it is free user friendly and I have grown quite attached to it.
The only real disadvantage of this is that I now have to be careful of taking off the face plate and take it with me to discourage crack heads from breaking my window and jacking it.
Jake at April 27, 2004 
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Comments
I've also got an MP3 player in my car and it's saved me a ton on CDs. 160 songs per CD is about right. It's great for long drives. My next project is to consolidate my CDs to MP3 and put them all on a handful of CDs for my MP3 player.
Everyone should have an MP3 player in their car if they drive more than 100 miles a week.
-Dave
Posted by: Dave at April 27, 2004 5:47 AM
My g/f bought me a kick ass gift for my new truck this past fall: I have a Panasonic CQ-DFX883U, and I *love* it. The Mp3 playback is invaluable! For longer trips though, I do have the ability to plug my Nomad Zen into the Aux-In for those CDs I havn't had a chance to burn yet ;)
There's pictures at the URL link above.
> deck url: http://www.cartoys.com/cartoys/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Product_ID=20889
Posted by: Sean at April 27, 2004 5:40 PM
Well, I have to say that I am happy that you got a MP3/CD player that suits your need. I recently bought a Panasonic MP3/CD player. Using my bartering skills, I was able to lower the price nearly fifty dollars. Well thats enough about me. Your writing skills needs improvement, and your sentence structure is what most English teachers would describe as inadequate. Oh well.
Posted by: Kenny at April 27, 2004 9:45 PM
I've been contemplating getting an MP3/CD player for my car, but I haven't been able to find out that I really like.
What I really want is what my roommate has, a hard drive based MP3 player. Of course they're available but they're all trunk mounted where his is in-dash. He managed to get a sweet deal on one when they stopped production. The thing has a replacable hard drive so that he can have just about his entire MP3 collection on hand, all the time.
The stop-gap solution I figured I go for is to get a MP3/CD player with an Aux-In (like Sean has), but I would really like the plug on the front, is that too much to ask?
Posted by: Bob at April 28, 2004 1:25 PM
I am pretty happy with my new car CD deck when combined with iTunes.
I feel your pain and I wrote about this. ( http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/jake_automotive_irks_a_heads_up_to_henry_ford.php )
3. Front Audio in Jack on the stereo. Just a mini headphone jack would be cool so you could hook up a Mp3 player or various other audio doohickeys. I used to use a cassette adapter on my old Ford to play my Minidisc and it was pretty keen. Going back to a normal CD player is a bit of a downgrade. The Smart Car had a special edition with an iPod dock. That is a groovy idea.
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at April 28, 2004 1:29 PM
